How Much Freedom Should a UI Framework Give You?

How much room should a UI framework leave for ideas that don't fit today's conventions?

In this video, KDAB designer Nuno Pinheiro shares his experiments with theming in QML. He follows one idea from Inkscape mockups to a working prototype. It has real transparency, a texture lit by a light that follows the mouse, and buttons that deform when you press them.

He then walks through the code, built with Shape, a styled Qt Quick Controls Button and MultiEffect. Along the way, he looks at the cost of flexibility and argues that good tools should leave room for exploration, including bad ideas.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and motivation

04:58 The cost of flexibility

07:12 Concept mockups in Inkscape

10:04 The live QML prototype

14:31 Code walkthrough

20:39 Why exploration matters

24:32 Conclusion

Links

Paula Scher Ted Talk